


Senza: Coda

by thevictorinox



Series: Senza: Decrescendo [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:40:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thevictorinox/pseuds/thevictorinox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven relentless days of hell since Sebastian died. He had spent every single one of them under inquisition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Senza: Coda

**Author's Note:**

> This is related to the work Senza: Omission, it would help to understand if you read that one first but can be read as a stand-alone.

Lestrade’s encounter with Jim isn’t dramatic in terms of location, in fact, it’s rather dull. There will be no throwing one’s person of the edge of a building here. But the irony of the place isn’t lost on Lestrade. It’s in the underground car-park, next to the yard. Lestrade is tired and worn from the extensive inquiries regarding his connection to Sebastian Moran, and the man’s subsequent death. 

The fallout of the event was catastrophic. Lestrade’s office had been turned into a sealed crime-scene, his warrant card was pulled, he was suspended pending the investigation into his own personal life, and made a pariah once his secret was out. They grilled him, asking questions about the long list of crimes that Sebastian Moran had been apart of, the murders he had committed, some he hadn’t even been aware that Sebastian had been involved in, as well as his connection to Moriarty. All of which he answered patiently, with the information he could offer, but it wasn’t much. Nothing really, and there was no one left to protect. Seb never told him a word and that was for the best. It was always for the best that Greg never knew if Seb was going to the shops, or blow some poor bloke’s head against a wall, he was none the wiser so long as Seb came home with groceries.

Seven relentless days of hell since Sebastian died. He had spent every single one of them under inquisition. He didn’t have time to plan a funeral, not that he could, the body hadn’t been released. So Lestrade became a withdrawn, and compliant man.  Then, on the seventh day, when they had nothing more to ask and he had nothing left to tell them, he took out the marriage license from within the folder it was kept, and slid it wordlessly across the table towards them. After that, he got up and left. 

Which brought him here, to the car-park. Where Moriarty was by the silver BMW, idly playing with a coin, while his face paced beneath beneath him. All of the man was alive with motion, a contrast to Lestrade’s still posture.

“You’re more pathetic than Sherlock’s pet when he faked his death you know, standing there, looking _all_ lost, like the world’s gone from under your feet.” 

“It’s called grief, Jim.” There was a flicker of something that crossed the darkness set into younger man’s face, and a slow oscillation of his head at the informal use of his name.

“You don’t get to call me _that._ ”

“You _did_ kill my husband, I’ll call you whatever I damn well please.” While Seb was alive, they never acknowledged the fact that they were married, it was simply a contract designed to protect them both. However, Lestrade got a brief sense of satisfaction at the way that Jim Moriarty’s eyes bulged when he said the word. Oh, that was delightful, Moriarty had no clue about that either. It had both been satisfying and angering at the same time. It meant that Sebastian had been killed for simply living with him. Fury silently welled along Lestrade’s veins and thrummed under his skin. He wanted to wrap his hands around Moriarty’s throat and not let go.

“Yours? _Oh,_ he was never yours. Even if you had matching house keys and a silly piece of paper.” The sing song tone mutters, trying to cover the initial shock. Lestrade shrugs.

“You’re right. He was never mine. Nor was he yours, because he was no one’s. You never figured that out did you Jim? That he let you live under the delusion that you owned him. He would follow you to the ends of the earth,  and leave a path of death and debris in his wake, he would be at your beck and call, your every word, but he would never be yours. Because you can’t own him, and the minute you tried was the minute he needed to escape. You can’t keep a man like that caged, because if you did, if you had, the light would go right from his eyes and you would have destroyed _everything_ that man was.” Moriarty frowns. 

“You did it. You kept him.”  Moriarty snarls as he advances angrily, but he stops within a few feet of Lestrade, pacing the ground like an animal trapped behind glass.

“You’re not listening. I didn’t keep him. I gave him a sanctuary. I gave him asylum.”

“Why….Why you?!” Lestrade looks at the man and sighs, shaking his head.

“I don’t know…I don’t think I’ll ever really know, because he never told me. I suppose maybe…it was that we cared for one another. We didn’t expect anything from one another. He knew I wouldn’t try to change him. I knew what he did, what he’s done, and I can’t change that, I didn’t want to….god help me, I didn’t want to.” The noise that Jim Moriarty makes in response is unflattering. Lestrade doesn’t know why he’s sharing the details of his personal life with the man who had ended it. Maybe it’s supposed to bring absolution. Greg doubts he’ll ever feel such a thing. 

“You think he cared?” Moriarty seems pleased by this, amused even. “How ridiculous. You’re nothing Gregory Lestrade, just a silly little human. You’re not extraordinary….you’re so _boring_.” Moriarty droned.

“Perhaps that’s what he needed.”

“Maybe so, but it’s your fault he’s dead.” Lestrade looked up. “And you should know Lestrade, I don’t appreciate when my things are ruined.”

“I’m not the one who pulled the gun.” 

“You might as well have been.” The dark eyes stare at Lestrade, he know he should feel fear, and maybe, somewhere in the back of his mind he can hear Seb’s voice telling him that if he should ever encounter Moriarty to run, but he pushes that down and away. “You were the reason He had to go. Corrupting him, making him docile… _boring_.” His words are all sharpness.

“You just don’t get it….do you?” Moriarty’s face morphs into suspicion, his dark eyes narrow. ”It wasn’t about you. He wasn’t yours, he wasn’t a thing to be owned! He was your bloody employee! And for a man who claimed he was so important you treated him like rubbish, you manipulative, controlling bastard!”  The expression changed openly into glee this time, and the wonder of a discovery flickered into life across his eyes. 

 ” _Oh_  this is something. You honestly think he  _loved_  you?” There must be something telling on Lestrade’s features because Moriarty claps his hands together in amusement like a child given a toy. “Oh God, this is more pathetic than Sherlock and his pet, Johnny…” Greg has never been a very violent man but he thinks about putting James Moriarty’s face through the passenger window of his Silver BMW. He doesn’t realize that he wasn’t imagining it in his head until he feels the scrape of glass on his hand. Funny thing how one’s body will move of it’s own accord when emotionally compromised. He steps back and looks down at his hand, bewildered at his own actions. Moriarty is still for a moment, more out of the shock of the whole thing he suspects, but the man pulls himself from his prone position over the car door and turns, twisting his head from side to side in that reptilian way, made only more eerie by the blood running down from the wound on his forehead. The dark eyes flick down as if he can see his own collar, which is flecked with red and shards of glass caught in it, glittering like crystal. 

“Now _that_ was something. You’re still so human, Gregor-” But once again Moriarty is cut off, this time Greg is in full control of his actions, casting off a solid hook towards the jaw of the other man. It doesn’t land quite how it should, Moriarty must have seen it coming because his fist glances off the bone, enough to hurt but it doesn’t knock him over like Greg wants. The amusement is gone from Moriarty’s eyes, he hauls back with an ill-concieved hit that sinks into Lestrade’s shoulder and will surely leave a bruise but other than that, it does’t have the genius was hoping for. All the intellect must have made up for the lack of strength Lestrade thinks. It feels a bit like Lestrade’s the bully, but he knows what Jim Moriarty has done in the past, it makes him furious.  

Moriarty acts first, all limbs and choas. It leaves Lestrade wondering if Sebastian taught him anything as he brushes the hits off, a few of them making fleeting hits. Moriarty changes tactics to scratching and it is this that Lestrade decides another solid  punch is deserved. 

Moriarty crumples easily to the cement, perhaps Lestrade didn’t need to put his entire weight into it, but he can’t be arsed to feel bad. He brushes his knuckles along his mouth, they come away streaked with fresh blood, he hadn’t realized he’d been hit earlier.  He’s looking at his hand still when Moriarty gets to his feet. 

He doesn’t see the knife until its embedded in his forearm. He draws in a hissing breath and pops his elbow into Moriarty’s nose, the force, takes the knife with, since the other man had yet to release it.  A few moments where Moriarty clutches his face and Lestade grips his arm. 

If there is any semblance of sanity in the psychopathic mind of James Moriarty it is gone now. He flies towards Lestrade, for once there’s a speed and grace to his moments with the weapon in hand. Perhaps Sebastian did teach him something. But he doesn’t recognize the knife in the other man’s hand. It is a thin, elegant stiletto, a weapon that had not fit Sebastian’s hands. A weapon that just wouldn’t fit Sebastian. 

Slashes decorate up and down the arms of his coat, cutting through the layers of a suit that was pristine that morning, into his flesh. It will be just another set of scars. Once, Moriarty sets his blade across Lestrade’s face, a mark that comes from his cheek, across his nose, and into his brow, it is only because he turns his face down and away that it misses his eye. 

And with blood down his face he feels himself fall. His knees going out from under him as pain blossoms across his chest during a lapse in adrenaline, when did  the blade land there? Was after his last hook? When he kneed the man in the ribs?  The world around him slows to a pace, and Moriarty stepping towards him, licking the blade clean the edges of his vision dark like an old photograph.

Lestrade is aware of his rather exposed position. He doesn’t have an advantage, he doesn’t have a hope, and judging by the weakening thud in his chest he doesn’t have much time left. But he can’t go out from the world without finishing his purpose in it. He can’t leave Moriarty in it. 

So went the man brings the knife down again, Lestrade feels the metal slide through his palm, and curls his fingers painfully around the bolsters, pulling it right out of Moriarty’s hand. Lestrade removes the blade. There is a look of utter surprise in the dark eyes of the criminal. Because he is surprised. It’s enough that Lestrade can have one last stand. He grabs him by the back of the neck with his injured hand and pulls  down. 

“You know….” He barely managed. “He said…he would k-kill himself….before he allowed….me to….compromise…my….morals like this….” The words are so hard to force past his lips, because his lungs are being filled now, aching and wincing instead of drafting in breaths.  Lestrade smiles. “This…is the only….good thing….about….his death….” 

Greg doesn’t need to watch as the stiletto slides into James Moriarty’s throat, through the skin, and cartilage, puncturing the trachea. So he releases the man who made his life hell in one week, and lets himself fall back, allowing his body the final reprieve. There is little more he can do in this world, he allows his eyes to stare up at the cinder block ceiling and murmurs good bye to the world that he knew. 

—-

When the Police finally file into the car park. The scene is ghastly, many turn away.  The Murder team is held back, Donovan’s hands are on her face, no one is quite sure who is sobbing in the silence. The consulting criminal lays face down and still on the concrete, their beloved inspector, on his back, face covered in blood, eyes open, staring blankly.  

Clutched tight in his palm, in the drying, sticky liquid, is a tiny GPS sub-dermal implant.

It looks like he’s ripped it right from under his skin.


End file.
